Participants: Artists from the fields of Performance, Music, Theatre, Dance, Visual Arts, Spoken Word, Literature

Reach: Cyprus-based

Language: English

Application Deadline: 28th of April 2021 

Organiser: Home for Cooperation, SPACE

Workshop period: May 11-16 2021

Buffer Fringe Performing Arts Festival 2021collaborates with SPACE for Rehearsing the Revolution Workshop in Nicosia in May 2021. We are inviting 5 Cyprus based artists (dancers, musicians, theatre makers: actors, performers, directors, visual artists, designers, authors, spoken word) from different backgrounds and disciplines to create a small multidisciplinary group who will work with the project team between 11 and 16 May 2021 (pending Covid-19 regulations). Each participant approaches the process from their own discipline. We aim to offer a workshop that can enrich their own artistic practice, broaden by developing a common narrative. The material generated during the workshop, the (online and offline) working sessions that will follow in the summer and the rehearsals in the autumn will result in a performance premiering at Buffer Fringe Performing Arts Festival 2021.

Getting to know the Organisers 

The Buffer Fringe festival was developed by the Home for Cooperation team in 2014, with the idea of providing a platform to question sensitive topics, expressing ideas in new and creative ways. It provides people the ability to engage with one another regardless of the dominant historical narratives, ideologies or identities which are very much politicized and often divisive for the peoples of Cyprus. Under the Artistic Direction of Ellada Evangelou, with Maria Varnakkidou (theatre director) and Nihal Soganci (Social Anthropologist) as Creative Directors, the festival moves even further towards collaboration and multi-disciplinary curation. Recognizing the challenging conditions brought about by the global health crisis, this affects the organization of the Festival, but we are also acknowledging the rough conditions facing many artists. Therefore, in the planning of the Festival, we aim to support artists, artistically and financially. The concept of the Buffer Fringe 2020-21 is Displacement asking a series of crucial questions, trying to understand, why this human activity is so contested, about the relationship between migration, mobility, and displacement, about how different people experience the displacement of themselves, their ideas and their practices, and many others. The RTR project will be a part of the 2021 festival and the workshop's progress will result in a performance premiering at Buffer Fringe Performing Arts Festival 2021.

SPACE is an internationally operating artist collective based in Amsterdam and Budapest. It presents a unique form of documentary theatre in various media. The projects border between fiction and reality, through which complex social themes are playfully and unconventionally dissected and personalized. The wicked problems of our time are made relatable and perceptible to a wide audience through the politics of the personal. They invite diverse groups of people to share experiences and expertise. Artists, scientists, activists, people with unheard stories and unseen knowledge participate as co-authors in the projects and expand their own stories in order to convey an engaged worldview that starts with the questions: ‘What if this would happen to me?’ ‘What would I do in that situation?’ Through the field of immersive collaborative storytelling SPACE does not make performances for an audience, but with them. Petra Ardai is the artistic director of SPACE.

The project Rehearsing the Revolution

The idea of RTR started with an interview of Petra Ardai (SPACE) with philosopher Ágnes Heller on the 30th anniversary of the Pan European Picnic; about European responsibilities and the possible reanimation of the joy and solidarity of 1989. RTR ensures an exciting pan-European dialogue between 3 countries that are geographically, politically and historically connected, yet very different. 

The project will be organized by SPACE (Amsterdam), Buffer Fringe Performing Arts Festival (Home for Cooperation, Ledra Palace buffer zone, Cyprus) and Tamara Zsófia Vadas, choreographer (Budapest). under the program of European Cultural Foundation

Rehearsing the Revolution is a multi-year hybrid art project of SPACE that involves different human biotopes in offline and online performances, workshops, live stream meetings to generate a new shared narrative reflecting the major changes and challenges of the world today. RTR is a process that reveals urgent stories of change that are delayed by the lack of collaboration. A series of restorative dialogues; workshop, mapping gaming and reflecting. What withholds us from joining forces? How can we align our causes, motivations and interests and create the cultural shift that is needed for an inclusive and sustainable future? RTR is implemented in several locations, in the Netherlands, Hungary and Cyprus. We engage local communities to create distinctive biotopes that connect local narratives with a shared European one. The new European narrative will be locally rooted, pluriform and imaginative. Each biotope adds to this narrative, driven by the local reality, communal and individual inputs.

The workshop & Process

This workshop is a journey of imaging fictitious revolutions, shifts in how we relate to the other to the past and future, to the commons and create a playground for the imagination. SPACE brings a week of playful activities and immersive storytelling based on the ‘politics of the personal’. The narrative is generated through storytelling, spoken word, movement and theatre, all on the edge of fiction and reality. The participants will work in pairs, individually and together as a group and actively shape the 5-day creative process with their contributions. They will become co-authors. Engaging, re-imagining, sharing local experiences, stories and narratives of the Island; we will create material for an interactive presentation, an imaginary proposal for a new European narrative. Led by Petra Ardai (theatre maker, artistic director of SPACE) together with Jörgen Unom Gario (poet, spoken word artist), Tamara Vadas (dancer, choreographer), Nihal Soğancı (Anthropologist and member of the Buffer Fringe team), Maria Varnakkidou (Theatre Director and member of the Buffer Fringe team).  

The process will continue with weekly meetings with project facilitators continuing the creative process, and will culminate in a 10-day workshop from Sept. 28th - Oct. 8th, with performance dates in October. 8-9-10, 2021, in the context of the Buffer Fringe festival 2021 in Cyprus. Your full commitment will be required. 

Support for participating artists: Each participant will receive an honorarium

We consider this as the initial start of future collaborations.  

ALL application material must be submitted ONLY in English, and must contain:

• A CV of the artist (max. 3 pages) or link to the website or blog of the company/group
• Expression of Interest taking the workshop theme into consideration, answering the question “Why do you want to be involved in this artistic journey / co-creative process?”  (max. 300 words)
• Accompanying materials (links in letter): YouTube or Vimeo link to video documentation of the work OR video excerpts from the rehearsals 

Links:

Buffer Fringe

https://www.home4cooperation.info/

https://bufferfringe.org/

SPACE

https://www.spaceexplorers.nl

Rehearsing the revolution

https://www.rehearsingtherevolution.org

For further inquiries you can contact bufferfringe@home4cooperation.info or call: +357.22445740/ +90. 5488345740. The applications should be submitted to contact@home4cooperation.info by the 28th of April 2021.